by B. R. GOWANI
PHOTO/Daily Mail
It was a beautiful sunny day in Britain in late April this year that Prince William got married to Catherine Middleton. Hundreds of millions of people watched the ceremony on TV and hundreds of thousands had thronged the streets of London to witness a fairy-tale like wedding. Thousands of reporters were deployed in London and elsewhere to report on wedding and people’s reactions. Millions of dollars were spent and attention was paid to each and every minute thing.
Around the world, people watched this grand spectacle; the wealth, opulence, civility, pageantry, and what not.
Lo and behold! What happens after hundred days? There are riots all over England.
Further riots in London as violence spreads across England. SOURCE/In 2 East Africa
How can things go so wrong so fast?
In reality, things have been rotten for a long time. The royal weddings and other such spectacles are a media (including the Rupert Murdoch owned) created frenzies which divert people’s attention from the real issues. Then it reaches such a point that one tragic incident happens and people’s anger knows no bound. Mark Duggan, a black, was killed by police. This has led to riots in several English cities.
Michael Albert is right on target when he says: “The real surprise about riots from London to Birmingham and Manchester, is not that London is burning, but that Paris, New York, and Rome aren’t – yet.” He then adds: “But who knows what’s next? And who knows what should be next?”
Its ironical that just last month, Prime Minister David Cameron as part of an austerity measures announced a cut in public spending by 80 billion pounds ($130 billion). This also includes the reduction in police force by 16,000, to be carried out by the year 2015. What will happen is that private security firms will replace the public police officers at exorbitant price.
Just two more examples of the rottenness:
The top 10% of the household wealth in Britain is 100 times more than the wealth the lower 10% of the households possess! This is the lowest figure since right after the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) when Britain and other European countries were devastated.
Between 1998 and 2010, 333 people have died in Britain while in police custody. Not a single police officer was found guilty.
Britain is like that doctor who diagnoses the illness of other patients but he himself don’t want to get examined his own ailments because he is well aware that it is very serious. (This is also true of other Western countries, including the US, who are never tired of preaching democracy to the Third World countries and carrying out “humanitarian” wars, without ever looking at the ills bedeviling their own countries.)
But Cameron is worried about Britain’s image:
“We need to show the world, which has looked on frankly appalled, that the perpetrators of the violence we have seen on our streets are not in any way representative of our country – nor of our young people.”
As if the world thinks highly of Britain or is unaware of Britain’s colonial crimes or Cameron’s senseless and criminal war, which he initiated with France, against Libya.
B. R. GOWANI can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com